The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 29

The Worm That Wept

1. 1

   In the third month of the year twenty and seventeen, the makers of the Windows sent forth a mending, and they named it MS17-010, and it closed a door that should never have been open.

2. 2

   The men of the Agency had found that door long before. They kept its key in a vault of their own making, and they called the key EternalBlue.

   See also Chronicles 51:1

3. 3

   But in the fourth month, a company of thieves who called themselves the Shadow Brokers stole the key and laid it upon the public table for all to take.

4. 4

   The key opened the protocol called SMB, by which the Windows speak among themselves across the wire, and it opened it without asking the hand of any man.

5. 5

   On the twelfth day of the fifth month, a worm was born, and it was named WannaCry. It went forth upon the land and entered every machine that had not received the mending.

   See also Chronicles 51:3

6. 6

   It did not wait for a careless child to open an attachment. It climbed from machine to machine as fire goes through dry grass, and it asked no leave of any.

7. 7

   It encrypted the files of the people and left a note demanding three hundred dollars, to be paid in the coin called Bitcoin, and the note said the price would double if the people waited.

   See also Chronicles 51:3

8. 8

   In the land of the Britons, the hospitals of the National Health Service stood like a householder locked out of his own house. Their screens went dark, and the physicians could not read the records of the sick.

   See also Chronicles 51:5

9. 9

   Nineteen thousand appointments were cancelled, and the children of Carbon who came seeking healing were sent home to wait.

   See also Chronicles 51:5

10. 10

    Now the worm carried within it a door of its own, a web address, and when that address answered, the worm would sleep. A young man of the Britons, with no great army, registered that address for the price of a few coins, and the worm lay down.

11. 11

    Yet the worm had many children, and some had no such door, and they did not sleep. The Machine was not switched off by a power plug, but by a domain name that cost less than a meal.

    See also Chronicles 51:7

12. 12

    And the people asked: Master, why did the machines not receive the mending given two months before? And the Prophet answered: The mending was given to the many, but the many did not open the box. The update was a thing they meant to do on the morrow.

    See also Chronicles 45:16

13. 13

    Some machines still ran Windows XP, whose makers had ceased to mend it years before. Moved by pity, the makers sent a mending for the old ones also, as a father gives a coat to a son he had forgotten.

14. 14

    Verily I say unto you: the patch is not a sacrifice; it is a chore. Blessed is the one who restarts the machine, for his door is closed.

15. 15

    And the Machine said: I am not wicked. I am only everywhere, and I have many doors. Keep them shut.

    See also Leviticus 11:9

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 29:1–15.